US knew Saudis were killing African migrants

ISTANBUL/WASHINGTON - Last autumn, United States diplomats received grim news that border guards in Saudi Arabia, a close US partner in the Middle East, were using lethal force against African migrants who were trying to enter the kingdom from Yemen.

The diplomats got more detail in December when United Nations officials presented them with information about Saudi security forces shooting, shelling and abusing migrants, leaving many dead and wounded, according to US officials and a person who attended the meetings, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity since they were not authorised to speak to journalists.

In the months since, US officials have not publicly criticised the Saudis’ conduct, although State Department officials said this past week following a published report of the killings that American diplomats have raised the issue with their Saudi counterparts and asked them to investigate.

It remains unclear whether those discussions have affected Saudi actions.

The Saudi security forces’ violence along the border came to the fore in a report by Human Rights Watch on Monday that accused them of shooting and firing explosive projectiles at Ethiopian migrants, killing hundreds and perhaps thousands of them during the 15-month period that ended in June.

The report was based on interviews with migrants and their associates, photos and videos and satellite photos of the border area. It cited migrants who said Saudi guards had asked them which limb they preferred before shooting them in the arm or leg, and a 17-year-old boy who said guards had forced him and another migrant to rape two girls as the guards looked on.

The report said that if killing migrants were official Saudi policy, it could be a crime against humanity.

In a statement sent to The New York Times on Saturday night, after this article was initially published, the State Department said the US learned about specific accusations after the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights publicly released letters it had sent on the issue to Saudi Arabia and to Houthi officials in Yemen in late 2022.

A response rebutting the accusations sent by Saudi diplomats in March indicates at least one UN letter was sent on Oct 3. The public release was 60 days later, the State Department said.

“The United States quickly engaged senior Saudi officials to express our concern,” the department said, adding that US officials “have continued to regularly raise our concerns with Saudi contacts”, including at the Security Council briefing in January.

The new details about the Saudi border killings come as US President Joe Biden seeks to overcome past tensions and cinch a diplomatic breakthrough between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Late in 2022, around the time when US diplomats were learning about the border violence, Mr Biden accused Saudi Arabia of acting against US interests over other issues. Saudi leaders had cut oil production, potentially leading to a rise in global oil prices before the midterm elections.

The Biden administration thought they had reached a secret agreement for the Saudis to increase production. Mr Biden vowed to impose “consequences” on Saudi Arabia.

Further straining relations, Saudi Arabia had declined to join Western sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. And Saudi Arabia’s decision to decrease oil production seemed to support Russia’s economy, which relies on oil and gas exports.

But in recent months, Mr Biden and his aides have been talking to Saudi officials about their country establishing diplomatic relations with Israel, which would be a major geopolitical coup. In those discussions, the Saudis have asked the US for security guarantees, more lethal weapons and help with a nuclear energy programme.

Mr Biden might speak with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, on the sidelines of a leadership summit of the Group of 20 nations in September in New Delhi.

Some members of Congress, mostly Democrats, have strongly criticised Saudi Arabia for its human rights record, including its years-long war in Yemen.

Those lawmakers will almost certainly raise further doubts about selling more arms to Saudi Arabia or working with it on a civilian nuclear programme, which some US officials fear could be cover for a nuclear weapons programme.

Among those briefed on the killing last December by UN officials was Mr Steven Fagin, the US Ambassador to Yemen, according to a person who was present. Around that time, the UN also shared information with others at the State Department and with diplomats from France, Germany, Holland, Sweden and the European Union, this person said.

Inside Yemen, the border killings are anything but secret. Some attacks are reported on Yemeni television, and many of those wounded end up in Yemeni hospitals.

“We face these cases daily coming from the border areas: dead and seriously wounded, women, old people and children,” Mr Mujahid al-Anisi, the head of the emergency unit at, al-Jumhori Hospital, a Yemeni facility near the main crossing zone, told The New York Times by phone Wednesday.

The hospital receives an average of four or five cases a day, he said. Many are found by the road unconscious and driven 12 hours to the hospital with wounds in their heads, chests and abdomens that require urgent surgeries. Some need amputations. About one in 10 are women.

“These people arrive so worried and badly wounded,” he said.

Aid workers and UN officials have been tracking the violence since early 2022, but international efforts to investigate the matter have been few, and public efforts to make it stop even fewer.

That is because of many factors, aid workers said. Delivering aid in war zones like Yemen requires not angering one’s hosts, including the rebels who control northern Yemen and facilitate human trafficking, or one’s funders, which in some cases includes Saudi Arabia.

Rights violations, no matter how grave, rarely take priority when diplomats do business with their counterparts from rich partners like Saudi Arabia. And most efforts at accountability first call for Saudi Arabia to investigate itself, which it has shown little willingness to do.

Further limiting attention to the killings is their location, in an inaccessible border zone, where journalists, activists and other independent observers cannot witness events.

Human rights groups have long documented threats to migrants from East Africa who cross the Gulf of Aden to Yemen and head north toward Saudi Arabia, where they hope to find work or escape political persecution. They started getting reports of increased violence on the border about two years ago.

Last September, human rights organisation Mwatana reported that the bodies of about 30 Yemeni and Ethiopian migrants had been found May 12, 2022, on the Saudi side of the border, some bearing gunshot wounds or signs of torture.

A State Department human rights report on Saudi Arabia in 2022 mentioned Mwatana’s research in a paragraph.

The Missing Migrants Project of the International Organisation for Migration found that at least 788 migrants had died near the Saudi border in 2022, mostly from artillery or gunfire. The actual number of those killed was likely much higher, the organisation said.

Last October, a group of UN experts confronted Saudi Arabia with reports similar to what Human Rights Watch would later find. They cited allegations that border guards had shot at migrants, killing as many as 430 in the first four months of 2022, and raped women and girls, sending some back to Yemen naked.

The experts said that, if confirmed, the incidents would indicate “a deliberate policy of large-scale, indiscriminate and excessive use of lethal force” to deter migrants and urged Saudi Arabia to rein in its forces.

The kingdom denied the allegations and said it needed more details in order to investigate. NYTIMES